Cats and Dogs ‘Defend the Grounds’ in Pet-Centric Apocalypse

Post-apocalyptic writing often has a self-involved or narcissistic quality to it. In most stories, the apocalypse happens to us, to humans generally. That is not the case in the comic-book series Legend, whose first collection Defend the Grounds was recently published.

Described by the creator as “Watership Down meets The Walking Dead, with dogs (and cats),” Legend chronicles the survivor’s tale of pets after humanity disappears.

The story’s hero, Legend, is a reluctant dachshund and the chosen leader of the Free Dogworld. With the help of the diversely opinionated pack of religious mutts and a gnarly well-armed army of felines, Legend must fight back the encroaching darkness of the post-apocalyptic wilderness.

What suits animals to a story of survival and extinction, a topic considered uniquely and counter-intuitively human? Co-creator Sam Sattin explains:

“The world animals—particularly wild animals—inhabit is quite dangerous, and disproportionately affected by human activity . . . In Legend, many of the dogs and cats were domestic pets prior to the downfall of mankind, which complicates things in an interesting way—and they have differing feelings about the humans being gone.”